The midterms are just six weeks away, and the election is going to focus on one thing: Donald Trump. The good news for Trump is that being the focus will gratify his ego. The bad news for Trump (and good news for Democrats) is that he has never been so weak.

Last week saw Trump hit yet another new low in polls. Depending on the polls, at best, Trump’s approval rating is 39%. At worst it’s at 29%, which is getting into Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush territory. On every issue–the economy, immigration, relations with allies–Trump is below water with voters. His standing among independent voters has cratered. Young men and Latinos, two groups that the media insisted were signs of a political re-alignment in 2024, are abandoning the GOP.

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About the only groups sticking with Trump are hard-core MAGA voters (which include evangelicals). Even they aren’t enthusiastic about the job the president has been doing. In one poll, only 15% said that the cost of living wasn’t bad, hardly a ringing endorsement. By comparison, 38% said it was the worst it’s ever been.

If the polls were the only sign of Trump’s weakness, it would be bad enough. But there’s plenty more. His meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping resulted in nothing, despite Trump’s fawning. The Federal Reserve seems poised to raise interest rates (and thus mortgage rates) soon in response to inflation caused by Trump’s war with Iran. Trump continues to fumble through the war with no real plan to end it. One day he is pledging yet again to “annihilate” Iran and then on another day renames the Strait of Hormuz “Trump Strait.”

Republicans up for election are underscoring just how weak Trump is by distancing themselves from him. The steps are modest at best — removing mention of Trump’s name from campaign websites, some mild wishes that the war would end — but even those moves would be unthinkable just a year ago, for fear of triggering Trump’s wrath and a challenger in the primaries. (Those moves are also useless because Trump has made the Republican party synonymous with himself.)

When faced with a problem, Trump has always been skillful in creating a new outrage as a distraction. Even here, Trump is signaling that his best days are past. The outrage that he ginned up was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House for negative coverage. The White House later shifted the excuse to “national security” and anonymous sources, only to be humiliated when it was revealed a key anonymous source was J.D. Vance.

Worse still for Trump, the ban backfired. In solidarity, all the outlets that provide pool video coverage of the president boycotted presidential events, including Fox News. Trump is a media hog, and suddenly his big event last week, welcoming Xi, was nowhere to be seen except on MAGA-friendly outlets that almost no one watches. Trump was left wondering “Where are my cameras?,”confused about the result of his own actions.

So what is Trump left with? He continues to push for monuments to himself, including the White House ballroom and a garish arch, which seem to occupy much of his time. He has run political ads (created with taxpayer money) celebrating himself. He will keep going to rallies to bask in applause from his remaining supporters, but even there he’s weak. He’s going to deep red states, where he knows he will still be loved and where he won’t further harm Republican candidates. 

Trump will keep repeating his same attacks on communism (as if it was the 1950s all over again) and also on transgender rights, which he considers “one of our great soundbites.” At the dud GOP convention in Dallas this month, Trump said he was going to resurrect anti-trans attacks one week before the election. Trump seems to think that those attacks will distract people from high gas prices, rising interest rates and an endless war.

At this point, the only sign of Trump’s strength comes from elsewhere, notably the out-of-control Supreme Court. The Court just agreed to let the federal government, which has no role in monitoring elections, use a database to check voter registration rolls. Given the incompetents in the Trump administration, this is bound to result in legitimate voters being disenfranchised. Among them are likely to be trans voters, whose records may be based on their deadnames.

A trapped Trump is a dangerous Trump. He may try to overturn the election results if Democrats win in a landslide. But he will still be operating from a position of weakness. In 2020, Trump lost by a narrow margin. This time around, voters will likely reject his proxies even in areas he just won two years ago.

Trump can proclaim the election stolen, but his allies in the media, like Fox News, aren’t about to amplify his claims, having paid a hefty price for their lies two years ago. If Trump is unpopular now, encouraging another insurrection will only make him even more so. 

The reality is that Trump is a lame duck. The economy won’t recover sufficiently in two years for him to make his unconstitutional dream of a third term a reality. The GOP will be scrambling to find its way back, and Trump’s unpopularity will make Republicans look for ways to differentiate the party from the president. While it’s always risky to count Trump out, as he and his presidency age, they are both diminishing. The damage that he can do will continue, but the era of his domination may finally be winding down.